Crops having new, desirable traits are useful for plant breeding, research, and agricultural purposes. Such crops may be produced using the methods of biotechnology. However, the production and selection of a commercially suitable transgenic event may require extensive research, analysis, and characterization of a large number of individual plant transformation events in order to select an event having both the desirable trait and the optimal phenotypic and agricultural characteristics necessary to make it suitable for commercial and agricultural purposes. This process of event selection often requires greenhouse and field trials with many events over multiple years, in multiple locations, and under a variety of conditions so that a significant amount of agronomic, phenotypic, and molecular data may be collected. The resulting data and observations must then be analyzed by teams of scientists and agronomists with the goal of selecting a commercially suitable event. The invention provides such a commercially suitable event resulting in a new, desirable trait in maize.
Accurate determination of maize reproductive maturity is also useful for plant breeding, research, and agricultural purposes, such as in maize hybrid seed production. Tools commonly used in the art for predicting and estimating stages of maize growth and development include scales such as V-Stages, which are based on vegetative characteristics, and Growing Degree Units, which are based on the number of growing degree days. However, both of these tools produce estimates of tassel development stage that vary significantly across maize genotypes. Relying on these measurements may thus create a risk of missing the optimally efficacious time for treatment regimens in which development stage is an important factor. The invention provides a Relative Development Scale based on tassel development reconciled across genotypes, which is useful for monitoring and predicting tassel development in maize across various genotypes.